Home » Culture, history and religion of the Brazilian Northeast » Plastic Arts of the Northeast: A Cultural Journey

The plastic arts of the Northeast have received outside influences and information and have helped to build a genuinely Brazilian and local art – a process of appropriation and re-creation that goes back to the colony.

The European artists who accompanied Maurício de Nassau during the Dutch occupation of Pernambuco (1630-54) are credited with the first images of the landscape of Brazil and, in particular, of the Northeast.

Frans Post captured the vast horizons of the northeast, its mills and fortresses; Albert Eckhout depicted animals, plants and typical characters on large canvases; the fauna and flora of the new Dutch domains were minutely drawn by Zacharias Waneger, Nassau’s clerk and steward and an amateur artist.

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Colecionador Ricardo Brennand - Obras de Arte03:36

Obras de Frans Post06:16

While these inaugural images were created by Dutch and Calvinist hands, all the art that emerged in the Northeast during the first centuries of the colony is a child of Portugal and is Catholic, created by the religious orders that settled in the Northeast or by laymen hired to decorate the churches in the towns and mills.

The Benedictine monk Agostinho da Piedade (1580-1661), the first religious sculptor in Bahia, and his pupil Agostinho de Jesus (1600-61).

Jesuits and Franciscans are also represented in the gallery of 17th-century sculptors, which grew as the sugar industry grew richer, building new temples or enlarging and transforming old ones.

Over time, the craft of moulding, carving and painting the glory of God was passed on to craftsmen born in the colony, sometimes of mixed race.

João de Deus Sepúlveda, a mulatto from Pernambuco, lived in the second half of the 18th century and painted the ceiling of São Pedro dos Clérigos church in Recife.

Whether Portuguese or Brazilian, white or black, Northeastern Baroque art developed on the coast, transposing and adapting the language of the metropolis to the colony: the lack of marble used in European sculpture, for example, was compensated for by the development of woodcarving, which reached its peak with Francisco das Chagas, known as Cabra, and later Manuel Inácio da Costa, both from Salvador.

Little is known about the first, except that he was a mulatto and that in 1758 he carved the magnificent Dead Christ with drops of ruby blood for the Third Order of Carmel.

More is known about the second, who lived between 1763 and 1857: considered the greatest sculptor of his time, he left a vast legacy, of which the image of St Peter of Alcântara in the Church of St Francis stands out.

Evolution and history of the plastic arts in the northeast

BAHIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING

Between the mid-18th and 19th centuries, the influence of the Bahian School of Painting spread to the Northeast.

Its greatest exponent, José Joaquim da Rocha (1737-1807), was Brazilian but learned his trade in Lisbon before returning to Salvador, where he became the most sought-after master painter of his time.

Among his most enduring works is the ceiling of the nave of the Conceição da Glória church.

Rocha trained many students, including José Teófilo de Jesus (1758-1847), who, like his master, studied in Europe and worked in church decoration and as a portrait painter.

Also from the Baiana School was Antônio Franco Velasco (1780-1833), who painted the ceiling of the nave in the church of Bonfim, among other works, but became nationally known for his portraits.

ACADEMICISM

In the 19th century, painting became detached from architecture and the demands of religion.

An academic order was established in the Northeast, which, in line with the vocation that had been manifested since the early days of the colony, was modelled on Europe – the destination of almost all the Northeastern artists of the time, some of whom had studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro.

This transit, however, did not mean a rejection of Brazil, but a search for new tools to represent and construct it.

Thus it fell to Pedro Américo (1843-1905), a native of Paraíba, to paint what would become the official portrait of the proclamation of independence, an image that has become part of the Brazilian unconscious – the painting Independência ou morte (Independence or Death), currently in the Museu Paulista (Ipiranga Museum) in São Paulo.

In O último tamoio (The Last Tamoio), Rodolfo Amoedo (1857-1941), from Bahia, helped to construct the image of the Indian, an emblem of the nation he was forming. Telles Júnior (1851-1914), from Pernambuco, used the language he had learnt in Europe to represent the Northeast.

Other important artists from the Northeast during this period were Arsênio Silva (1833-83) from Pernambuco, who introduced the use of gouache to the country, and Rosalvo Ribeiro (1867-1915) from Alagoas, who specialised in military scenes.

This adaptation of European languages, styles and techniques to Brazilian reality continued when, from the second decade of the 20th century, artists from the Northeast joined the modernist movement.

Examples of this are the careers of two of the greatest Brazilian painters of the period, both from Pernambuco. Vicente do Rego Monteiro (1899-1970) refined a language in Paris that was influenced by indigenous ceramics; Cícero Dias (1907-2003), who at the end of the 1920s created surrealist watercolours based on the colours and themes of his native Recife, spent most of his life in Europe, without separating himself from the universe of the Northeast.

It’s curious to remember that the Northeast not only “exported” artists, but also received them, enchanted by its landscapes.

The Italian-Paulist painter José Pancetti (1902-58) settled in Salvador in the 1950s, where he produced some of his best seascapes; the Argentinian painter and draughtsman Carybé (1911-97) settled there at the same time, recording elements of Bahian culture with an unmistakable touch.

NEW DIRECTIONS

Between the 1940s and 1950s, the plastic arts of the northeast underwent a period of effervescence and renewal. In Salvador, Carybé himself, Genaro de Carvalho (1922-71), known for his tapestries, and the Sergipe painter Jenner Augusto (1923) took part in this movement, as did the sculptor Mário Cravo (1923).

In Ceará, the Sociedade Cearense de Artes Plásticas (Ceará Society of Plastic Arts) was founded in 1943, with names such as Aldenur Martins (1922), Sérvulo Esmeralda (1929), Raimundo Cela (1890-1954) and Antôtuo Bandeira (1922-67), the great Brazilian abstractionist.

In Pernambuco, the Collective Workshop of the Recife Society of Modern Art was founded in 1948. Its greatest exponent was Gilvan Sanuco (1928), a painter and printmaker who revived and renewed the universe of the northeastern cordel. João Câmara Filho (1944), a native of Paraíba who would later paint scenes of the country under the military dictatorship in dense, sombre colours, also participated in this studio.

The exchange between external influences and local references continues to this day.

It can be seen in the constructivism of Rubem Valentim (1926-91), who uses candomblé symbols, and in the sculptures of Francisco Bremund (1927), who works in his studio-olaria in Recife with techniques inherited from the European ceramic tradition.

Polish-born sculptor Frans Krajcberg (1921), who lives in southern Bahia, uses calcined roots, trunks and vines in sculptures that combine artistic research and ecological activism.

Leonilson, from Ceará, developed an extensive body of work in São Paulo (1957-93), including drawings, paintings and embroidery.

A list of artists from the Northeast or associated with the culture of the Brazilian Northeast would also include prints by Guita Charifker (1936), photographs by Pierre Verger (1902-96), Mário Cravo Neto (1947) and Christian Cravo (1974), the African-rooted sculptures of Agnaldo dos Santos (1926-62) and Emanoel Araújo (1940), the work of Antonio Dias (1944), and many others, including Gil Vicente (1958) and Sebastião Pedrosa, from Recife, and the Bahian Marepe (1970), who exhibits installations and paintings in galleries in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Art from the Northeast looks beyond its borders.

Visual arts in the North East

Written by Willy Sievert

Editor of Bahia.ws since its founding in 2009. Based in Salvador, he travels frequently across the Northeast and all of Brazil to keep the guides up to date. Learn more about Willy Sievert →

Published on 29/01/2013 · Updated on 03/07/2025

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